


Take these broken wings

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the GoT-Exchange, for the prompt: "Petyr/Sansa: He sees more of himself than of Cat in her." </p><p>"He had never known, in those days, how utterly perfect she would become – and as a result, how incredibly out of his reach. <i>Perhaps I taught her too well.</i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take these broken wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marquise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marquise/gifts).



> For the queen of creepyshipping! ;-) Though this is light on the actual 'shippiness,' I'm afraid!

The opulent bedchambers are bright with the glow of dozens of candles, flames flickering from every available surface and a hearty fire crackling in the hearth. The young queen (for she is a queen today, as she had been a queen yesterday, and her coronation tomorrow will be mere formality) prefers the rooms of King’s Landing nearly blinding, and Petyr wonders if it is a salve to chase away the shadows of her troubled time here – for certainly it is not a habit that she kept at the Eyrie. Only this place would do such a thing, he thinks – in ordinary circumstances she has evolved past such amateur mistakes; she is too skilled for such folly. 

He should bring it to her attention, she should be seen to have no weaknesses, not even for the innocent girl she had been the last time she had thought to wear a crown, before her delicate world had been dashed like a glass ornament. And yet he holds his tongue and keeps his silence; these little cracks are the most valuable of currency, they are what keep him _needed_. 

He fears she has recently begun to see his own breaking points, and to have such leverage keeps them on equal ground. Equal – the closest he can hope for, anymore, for he may have been the teacher and she may have been his most devout pupil, but now she is a queen and he will stand beside her (and one step below her…) and whisper secrets and promises in her ear. (And if he keeps one or two to himself, for safe-keeping, for insurance, he suspects that she will do the same – at least, she will if he has taught her anything at all.) 

Sansa sits before the great looking glass wrought in silver (not gold, never gold, the gold has been cast into the fire), and she picks up the fine hairbrush to run it through her fiery locks – never again shall she wear the ruddy brown that made her his _Alayne_ , his own creation and special secret; he must share her with the realm, with the people, and he must clench his fingers into fists so fierce that his knuckles turn white to keep himself from reaching out to grab her bicep, as though she may fall into the abyss of the glass and be forever lost to him. He prefers the red – finer, rarer (and full of painful memories), but the brown called to mind the simpler girl she had once been, who had both shied and leaned into his kisses and turned as pink as a rosebud. He had never known, in those days, how utterly perfect she would become – and as a result, how incredibly out of his reach. _Perhaps I taught her too well._

If she notices his internal struggle, she says nothing – that is not so unexpected, he reflects, but he imagines she has carefully filed the information away. Her eyes are carefully blank, her expression schooled into that of neutral courtesy, the corners of her pink lips quirked up in the barest hint of a smile. For all that her return to the capital may have stirred unpleasant memories, she barely resembles the poor sweet girl she had been, the little bird caught in the jaws of the lion. _Exquisite,_ he thinks, or perhaps he whispers – the right corner of her lip twitches nearly unnoticeably (but he notices, of course he notices, he _always_ notices), and she meets his gaze in the looking glass with her vivid blue eyes. 

Petyr clears his throat and steps forward, pressing against the back of the chair so that her shoulder grazes against his chest; she shivers slightly. _Cold, my dear?_ he might ask, were they still in the Eyrie, and he might suggest an array of things to keep them warm, things to make his sweet maiden daughter blush and exclaim at his wickedness, her eyes over bright and eager. _I once could see the world in her eyes – her every secret, her very heart._

But to the queen, instead he says, “Do you know, when I first saw you, you reminded me of your aunt.” 

Sansa blinks, the only outward sign that he has caught her off-guard; she is used to hearing how strongly she resembles her mother, from stranger and friend alike. “My aunt?” she replies casually, as though it does not matter much either way, and yet he sees the glimmer of interest in her eyes. _Information, Alayne, information is your best weapon; it does not fade like beauty, your wits cannot be gambled away as a fortune can._

But he is shamefully eager to share; the higher he pushes her upon the tallest pedestal in the land, the harder it is to reach her at times. “Your Aunt Lysa,” he clarifies, and he tilts his head in memory, the day on the tiltyard, the tourney to honor long-dead Ned Stark. 

The physical resemblance had struck him first and foremost, certainly, as it does most. He had been surprised to see the eldest daughter of Eddard Stark sharing none of his long, plain features, to see her sitting there as the image of Catelyn Tully, young and sweet and on the cusp of womanhood, from a time before Petyr Baelish had even heard the name Brandon Stark. Things had been simpler then, an eternal summer where he had never considered the notion that Catelyn may marry and thus he would lose her (but lose her he did, again and again, and even now, to think of her as truly _gone_ sets a wretch to his heart like nothing else). It had been the time his first love had bloomed, on the banks of the Trident, _I loved a maid red as autumn, with the sunset in her hair._

And so he had watched little Sansa Stark’s face closely when Ser Loras rode to her seat in the stands, when he leant forward to present her with a rose, and that had been the moment – even now, in this room a lifetime later, his lip curls in distaste. How rapturous she had looked then. _Lysa,_ he had thought, as he beheld the dreaminess there. _She has Cat’s face but she is like Lysa._

(And if she had reminded him of anyone else, of a stupid young boy with a blade in his hand and dreams in his heart, than he does not think upon it; that boy is dead, and better off so.)

“You had a romantic spirit,” he confides, his voice lowly intimate. “Very unlike your mother; she was much more practical, even as a girl. It reminded me far more of Lysa.” 

“Ah,” Sansa replies, and her eyes drop from his in the mirror, and instead her gaze runs along the expanse of his chest, intimate as any caress. “That is more like her, isn’t it?” 

Beneath his doublet and tunic, the long red scar burns. 

(He is glad that their romantic spirits have been long crushed to dust – there is no room in the world for such foolishness – Sansa is strong as he had been, had learned to squash hopeless daydreams; Lysa had been weak and her delusions had killed her.)

He is only glad that he had been forced to afford Sansa a second glance that day; the shrieking and wailing of her little companion when the foolish upstart squire of Jon Arryn’s fell and choked on his own blood drew the attention of all those around her from the carnage on the field. But even as the pinch-faced septa had pulled the girl away, murmuring apologetic sentiments about the delicate sensibilities of a young lady, Sansa had sat shock-still and silent, her face impassive and her eyes scrutinizing even as the man died before her. 

And in that moment, he had known. 

_What is she thinking?_ he had wondered idly, as he so oft does when confronted with new pieces and players, and the fact that he could not immediately read her mind had been surprising and delightful all at once. Lysa had never managed the art of discretion, in all the years he had known her, despite her place at court, and even Cat’s sweet face had been too open, too honest, too _revealing_. 

When he looks at the beautiful cool mask that watches him in the mirror now, he is reminded of Catelyn not at all. It is not a gift bestowed upon Sansa by her Tully blood, and certainly not by her Stark heritage – was there ever a man as painfully obvious as Ned Stark? 

No, that day he had seen something entirely differently, unique to Sansa Stark herself – a gift to be groomed and cultivated until the seed of curiosity had bloomed into the flower of manipulation. And he had been that master, that sculptor, and she his most precious and perfect creation. Often, he finds himself wondering if he would be so flawless as she, if he had had a tutor to show him the craft, rather than pull himself alone up the ladder of prosperity. Would having a maester or model have made him more palatable, so that men and women alike would turn to clay in his hands as they did in sweet Sansa’s milky white palms? The thought fills him with pride and jealousy, all at once, with satisfaction and trepidation. _She is better than I could ever hope to be,_ he admits silently to himself; she has a disposition that wins those to her side simply for the hope of winning her favor, of being blessed by her smile, and he has always lacked such a nature. 

She places the brush back down on the bureau, and he admires the image reflected in the glass. She is the vision of an ideal queen, a ruler for the ages, and he will stand by her side as they look down at all of the simpering lords and ladies come to beg pardon, for their ill-treatment of a traitor’s daughter (for the way they sneered at a young upstart from the Fingers, a low-born whelp with overwrought ambitions, they said). He had promised her Winterfell and the Vale, and he has given her _everything,_ handed her the world to clasp between her slim fingers. 

He closes his eyes and breathes deep, trying to gauge all the ways the world has changed, now that he has everything he has always wanted well within his sights, on the eve of all that he has ever worked for, since that day that Brandon Stark struck him down and Catelyn turned her back to him, and he vowed that he would rise higher than them all, that he would _show them_. 

“And are you happy, Sansa?” he asks when he opens his eyes, his voice soft, his breath brushing over the whorl of her ear, lifting a russet lock of hair with the weight of his whisper. 

Sansa twists a silver ring on her finger, and the corners of her lips pinch down in the slightest hint of a frown. She pauses, carefully weighing her words, and he thinks once more what a fine queen she will be – what a fine queen _he_ has made her. “Of course I am happy,” she answers finally. “How could I not be, with all you have given me?” Her fingers curl around his wrist, her thumb pressing against the steady beat of his pulse, and he feels the tempo quicken under her touch. “I am so grateful.” 

Yet the words sound flat, and his heart trembles in bitter disappointment. He does not think it a lie – perhaps even she does not think it a lie. But he can see the hint of longing lingering in her eyes, of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, and his joy evaporates like a drop of snow on a winter’s day. _There is something more she wants,_ Petyr thinks, and it is the greatest irony of all to see his own relentless unhappiness reflected in his protégé’s eyes. 

Together they have consumed and claimed the world – always seeking greater and higher power, always seeking _more_ , and yet for Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish both, it seems there will always be an emptiness that can never be filled. And even with the crown in his grasp – what he wanted, what he wanted for _her_ , what he thought she wanted, as well – there is still the ache of what has been lost in their hearts, one that cannot be soothed no matter what else they acquire to try and take the place of what is gone. 

Perhaps, he thinks, it is the place where their dreams once lived, before they were so irrevocably broken.


End file.
